The Lydney Excavation

Temple site excavated by Sir Mortimer Wheeler in 1920s. 

At the end of the fourth century, a temple complex on a hill overlooking the Severn estuary at Lydney, Gloucestershire, was built to the god Nodens. Finds at Lydney show the Nodens was a healing deity, and that pilgrims offered votive figures of dogs. These animals were mascots of healing throughout the ancient world. Nodens was likely to be connected to the sea and this temple was found to have a mosaic (now lost), of fish and sea monsters. Nodens corresponds with two figures of Celtic mythology, Irish Nuadha and Welsh Nudd, later Lludd. Lludd is the legendary king of Britain who fortified London and was buried at Ludgate. Both Nuadha and Lludd were involved in defending their kingdoms against invaders. At Lydney and London, Nodens may have been a god of the headland guarding a great estuary and this a national tutelary god. The patrons of Lydney were perhaps wealthy Romanised Celts of the great Cotswold villas, such as Chedworth. Built at the closing years of the Roman Empire, when Britain was under threat of barbaric invasion, and when paganism was giving ground to Christianity, Lydney could have been defiant against the new order. 

 Lydney Park overlooks the Severn River and is known for its azalea and rhododendron plantations.